Whats shrink wrap development ?

The most common use of the term, as I've heard it, refers to the development of products intended for sale on a store shelf. The reference is to the plastic wrapper enclosing the box.

The notion differentiates the kind of development work from, say, corporate "in-house" development, or work for hire development for a single client, or vertical market development where the application's aren't sold in stores, but through a dealer specialized in particular markets, like POS systems (though the line may tend to blur there).

There's also a blurring of the distinction of the "kind" of development work performed. For "in-house corporate" and even some vertical market applications, C#, Java, VB and other "database languages" like FoxPro, Dbase (X), etc. are common options, chosen for rapid development and ease of creating stable results. Some of us might go so far as to suggest less competence is required, at the risk of snobbery.

"Shrink wrap" applications, or commercial packaged stuff like Photoshop, AutoCAD, etc. must compete (or dominate) for sales, and as such require a certain finesse to attract attention. As such, the development tools tend toward languages like C++, Delphi perhaps, though we may see more C# appear in this area. However, many open source projects, like various SQL engines, Linux, etc. require as much (or more) engineering expertise for development, and the tools tend to be similar (though leaning toward open source compilers, and more often with cross platform requirements).

Thanks guys ! :)